Members of our staff are delivering the final comments about lottery ticket vending machines to the Lottery Commission this afternoon.
Yesterday, we delivered almost 1,200 comments to the Commission; however, we promised we would accept comments up until this afternoon, and that’s what we’ve done.
About 60 additional comments came into our office between yesterday afternoon and today—most of which were against the machines.
The final comment tally:
1,220 people commented against the machines.
36 people commented in favor of the machines.
As of yesterday afternoon, the Arkansas Lottery Commission had received 4 comments—of which 3 were against the machines, and 1 was for the machines.
By our best estimation, roughly half of the comments we received came from people who were not on Family Council’s mailing list—people who, for all we know, had never heard of Family Council before now.
What’s more, these comments came from almost every county in the state.
I believe those two facts in and of themselves are strong indicators that these comments represent a large cross-section of the People of Arkansas.
Hats off to everybody who sent in a comment! And don’t forget to come down to the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock at 1:00 PM on Thursday to reiterate to the Arkansas Lottery Commission in person what you said in your comments: That lottery ticket vending machines are a bad idea, and have no place in Arkansas.
